Too Much Order? The Impact of Special Secondary Norms on the Unity and Efficacy of the International Legal System

The diversity of International secondary norms has been the subject of increasing attention over the last decade. While primary norms regulate the behaviour of subjects of international law, secondary norms regulate the primary rules: creation, modification, extinction, interpretation and operation. The distinction between primary and secondary norms was adopted by the International Law Commission (ILC) In its analysis of state responsibility. Regimes of international law which combine certain primary norms with a distinct set of secondary norms designed to ensure the operation of those primary norms have since been termed 'subsystems' of international law. The possibility of legal problems arising from the multitude and diversity of International norms was initially perceived with respect to primary norms. The extensive Interrelations between states after 1945 brought a substantial increase in primary norms. It became evident, however, that the mere existence of these primary norms did not create order. On the contrary, the unorganized mass of— sometimes similar, at other times conflicting — primary rules made the system of international law more and more confusing: it became difficult to see the forest for the trees. As a result, some primary norms were equipped with special secondary norms to ensure their proper application and to resolve conflicts between norms. With the